Here are some photos of Halle Berry at the London premiere of her latest film, Crime 101, in which she costars with Chris Hemsworth. Halle looked amazing in The New Arrivals (the dress) and it’s difficult to remember that the woman is nearly 60 years old. To promote Crime 101, she gave a lengthy interview to The Cut about ageing, menopause, her divorces, her relationship with Van Hunt and her war with California’s Governor Newsom. Last year, Newsom vetoed a bill which would have helped menopausal women significantly. Halle made so much news when she said publicly that Newsom will never be president if he consistently “devalues women in midlife.” Well, she talks about that with the Cut as well. Some highlights:
Menopausal women get “dry”: “Look, it happens to more than 60 percent of women as we get older. Everything gets dry! If we talk about it and laugh about it, there’s no more shame or embarrassment. I’m almost 60. Fighting for women’s health feels like a formidable cause for my second act.”
A Scene in Crime 101 where her character spreads YSL’s Touche Éclat concealer all over her face: “Her character rang so true for me. You get to this age where you feel like you’re being marginalized, devalued. You feel it at work. You feel it from society. But I have adamantly decided I am not going to allow myself to be erased. That’s why I’m on my menopause mission. I’m going to be louder than I have ever been.” Part of that mission involves telling more onscreen stories, including comedies, about middle-aged women and poking fun at herself along the way. “When you get older, you stop getting sized up like a pork chop.”
Her third divorce from Olivier Martinez: “After my third divorce, people started to say, ‘What’s wrong with her? She’s crazy. She can’t keep a man.’ And I would always argue, ‘Who says I want to keep a man if he’s not the right man?’ I pretty much stopped doing interviews for a decade because I got tired of the same old story. It was always: ‘Poor Halle — Unlucky in Love Again.’” When I ask her to come up with her own headline to set the record straight, she closes her eyes. “Hmm. ‘Halle Berry Is Not a Damsel in Distress.’” Pause. “‘Halle Berry Is Not a Victim of Failed Relationships.’” Longer pause. “‘Halle Berry Never Said It’s Anyone Else’s Fault.’”
The stigma of beauty. “Another thing nobody really gets about me is that I’ve been a fighter my whole life — fighting to be seen for who I really am, fighting to be taken seriously as an artist, fighting the stigma of beauty.”
Winning the Best Actress Oscar: Winning the trophy was a career highlight, but “that Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career. After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door,” she says. “While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning. Directors were still saying, ‘If we put a Black woman in this role, what does this mean for the whole story? Do I have to cast a Black man? Then it’s a Black movie. Black movies don’t sell overseas.’” Berry once told three-time Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, “You goddamn deserve it, but I don’t know that it’s going to change your life. It cannot be the validation for what you do, right?”
She’s winning: “As a Black woman, now almost 60, I still get to work in movies and do what I love. I’m winning.”
Her war against Gov. Newsom: In November, she co-wrote an opinion piece in Time magazine criticizing California governor Gavin Newsom for vetoing the Menopause Care Act, a bipartisan bill designed to secure insurance coverage for proven treatments. Then, in December, she doubled down by scorching Newsom at a New York Times “DealBook” summit — even calling out his credibility as a future presidential candidate. “The way he’s overlooked women, half the population, by devaluing us in midlife, he probably should not be our next president either. Just saying,” she announced onstage moments before he was scheduled to speak. Newsom responded through TMZ at an airport the next day: “We’re reconciling this.” But over a month later, he still has not reached out as promised. “It’s disturbing when people say they’re going to do things and then they don’t,” Berry tells me. “But he heard what I said. If he is going to run to be our next president, he can’t sleep on women. Wake up, Gavin.”
Her relationship with Van Hunt: “I’m in the best relationship I have ever had,” she says. This past June, Hunt proposed. And? She leans in. “I haven’t said ‘yes.’ I don’t think we need to be married to have a meaningful relationship. I don’t know if we will ever get married,” she adds, citing “health reasons,” or the access and right to make crucial medical decisions as a legal spouse, as one of her exceptions to the rule.
The only time I rolled my eyes was with the “stigma of beauty.” I genuinely wish women who have lived their entire lives with pretty privilege would stop for a moment and understand that the “stigma of beauty” is not a real thing, especially if you have more to offer than looks. The rest of this interview is great though – I can’t believe Newsom still hasn’t reached out to Halle, and I hope she continues to use her platform to advocate for women over 50. It’s interesting as well that Van Hunt proposed and she took some time to make up her mind about it. After three divorces, she had every right to feel ambivalent towards marriage, although soon after this interview was published, Halle did accept Hunt’s proposal!
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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